The present invention is in the technical field of distribution of legal evidence. More particularly, the present invention is in the technical field of the cybersecurity triad of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability for securely distributing legal evidence to various authorized parties within the legal system. Legal evidence can include text, graphics, images, word processing, spreadsheet, .pdf and other computer data files, telemetry data, audio recording files, video files, audio and video metadata, biometrics data, such as fingerprints, voiceprints, Iris scans, and facial point scans, and other types of analog and digital information captured about a legal incident and the parties involved in a legal incident. Confidentiality requires limiting access to legal evidence data to only authorized legal system participants, and tracking and reporting date, time, MAC address, and other metadata for each access to legal evidence data. Integrity requires validating the chain of custody to ensure that legal evidence has not been edited or altered in any way from the time it was captured until it is used. Availability requires making legal evidence data available as needed to defendants, victims, defense attorneys, prosecutors, police, judges, court employees, and other legal system participants to support and participate in the legal process.
A wide variety of audio, video, image, and other electronic evidence is being captured by law enforcement agencies and other sources. Typically the evidence is recorded by audio and video camera recorder systems installed in police cars and other first responder vehicles, from body-worn microphones and video cameras worn by police officers, from fixed location audio microphones, from video cameras attached to buildings, street light poles, traffic light poles, and wires, and from other locations and sources. New devices such as Google Glass can provide video and audio streams from a wearer point of view similar to other body worn cameras. Sometimes combinations of several audio sources are recorded by different microphones at different locations, and then triangulation calculation algorithms identify the geographic coordinates of the source of a sound—such as where a weapon was fired. The audio, video, and images are used as evidence for DUI stops, traffic stops, shootings, robberies, assaults, traffic accidents, speeding, and other events and situations where audio, video, image, and metadata evidence is captured. In some cases data is still captured on analog microphones and video cameras and then converted to a digital format to be marked and stored. Increasingly, however, source data is captured using digital microphones and digital cameras, so no need exists to convert analog signals to digital format. Regardless of how captured, audio, video, and images are recorded on various storage media such as VHS tapes, CD-ROM disks, DVD disks, spinning hard drives, solid state hard drives, and solid state data storage chipsets, such as Compact Flash (CF) and Micro Secure Digital (MicroSD) non-volatile memory cards.
Typically audio, video, and image evidence data is enhanced with metadata (metadata=data about data) and combined all together into an integrated data stream of digital multimedia evidence (DME). Metadata often includes electronic tags of start and stop points of interest such as where and when the vehicle siren or lightbar was turned on or off; tags of latitude, longitude, date and time of when an officer pressed a record button or where an officer witnessed evidence being tossed out of a vehicle being pursued; and other location and time-based metadata, that enhances the searchability, reliability, and legal evidence value of the video, audio, and images collected. Most systems have a pre-record ability to always retain a looping amount of DME before an event occurs—i.e. retain the prior 30 or 60 seconds of video and audio recorded before an officer noticed an event and flipped on the siren or light bar, which automatically started a DME record process. In some cases audio and/or video data is processed by computer algorithms, which algorithms generate additional metadata such as gunshot location latitude, longitude, date and time, perform automated license plate number recognition, and capture other types of metadata. Police officers often have the ability to add notes to integrated video and audio streams tagged at specific dates and times when an event happened. This additional metadata can include descriptions of events, including information about vehicle drivers, passengers, and bystanders, such as name, address, phone number, age, height, weight, driver's license number, sobriety test results, injuries, and statements. Similarly, metadata about vehicles could include VIN number, license plate number and expiration date, make, model, color, year, observed damage, speed, heading, location and descriptions of possible evidence observed in and around the vehicle, open containers, contraband in and around a vehicle, insurance carrier and vehicle registration details, and other vehicle data. Incident metadata can include pictures, video, audio recordings, and descriptions of weather, nearby construction, obstructions and road hazards, tire skid patterns and lengths, witness comments, and other metadata. Audio and video camera recording systems use various methods and data formats to capture metadata and embed it into an integrated data stream along with audio and video analog and digital data in various standard and/or proprietary video, audio, and metadata formats. This integrated data stream of DME is often key to criminal and civil legal proceedings.
The audio, video, pictures, and metadata is transferred from a DME recording system in a police car or other first responder vehicle to a central storage system, so it can be securely stored, backed up, viewed, distributed, and retained for future legal proceedings. This DME transfer can be performed real-time through some kind of wireless streaming, or on a batch wireless offload basis when a vehicle comes in range of a wireless data transfer location such as a police station parking lot, fueling station, sally port at a jail, a fire station, or other authorized offload location during the course of a shift. An end-of-shift batch data transfer can also be performed using a wired network interface physical connection from the vehicle DME data recorder, a wireless network interface such as 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, or by physically carrying removable storage media from the vehicle DME recorder to a fixed location media reader device. In all cases the integrated DME data stream is transferred to one or more central DME repositories and/or servers. In a similar manner, audio, video, and metadata from fixed location audio microphones, still cameras, remotely controlled Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras, and video cameras are transferred in some wired or wireless manner to a central DME storage system. In all cases the video, audio, image, and metadata is securely and reliably transferred from a DME recorder located in the vehicle to another location. The integrity of the transferred file(s) is validated before the DME is deleted from the source vehicle DME recorder to make room for new DME.
Originally VHS tapes were removed from a VHS tape recorder located in the trunk of the police car, hand-carried to an evidence storage room at the police station, and manually logged into an evidence storage room by an evidence records clerk. Some vehicle DME systems “burn” the audio and video onto a CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disk using an integrated CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray burner built inside the vehicle DME recorder system. The Watchguard DV-1 is an example of such an in-vehicle CD burner system. Newer DME recorder systems store the audio, video, and metadata on a fixed or removable spinning hard drive, fixed or removable solid-state hard drive, compact flash (CF) card, MicroSD card, or other solid-state storage media. The DME removable drive can be hand carried to an offload connection or reader. The vehicle DME recorder can also use a wired network connection to transfer evidence data to a central DME storage area network system. A vehicle DME recorder system can also wirelessly connect to a wireless access point at various times to perform a batch upload transfer of all audio, video, and metadata to a central DME storage area network. Wireless microphones and video cameras worn by first responders can wirelessly cache and stream audio, video, and metadata to a nearby vehicle DME recorder or directly to a central DME storage area network, or can capture data on removable data storage media that is batch uploaded to a central DME storage area network. A DME recorder system can often stream audio, video, images, and metadata on a real-time basis over wireless networks back to a central dispatch display console, or to other vehicle computers so that real time video and audio is available for viewing by other police officers and supervisors in the field, by dispatchers in central dispatch, and by other authorized viewers in most any location with network access. Fixed location microphones, video cameras, and still cameras installed on buildings, poles, and traffic lights can also stream live audio, video, and still images to a central DME storage and management system. In all cases, audio, video, image, and/or metadata DME files are captured out in the field from vehicle based DME recorder systems from a variety of sources and are transferred to a central DME storage system.
Once the audio, video, images, and metadata has been captured from the field and logged into a central DME storage system, it will then need to be made available to various entities that are authorized to have access to the DME. These authorized entities can include defendants, victims, defense attorneys, prosecutors, police officers and supervisors, judges, and court employees. In some cases the DME files are made available to the news media and other external parties. DME needs to be made available consistent with the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability legal evidence and business rules established by the legal jurisdiction where the evidence was captured. Metadata is very useful for searching to go directly to the evidence in question, and to do searches across DME from multiple events and domains. For example, a prosecutor may want to know if a vehicle or driver has been involved in any other event or incident in the past 6 or 12 months or elsewhere in the county, city, or state where the incident in question occurred.
The typical method currently used to distribute evidence to various authorized entities is to “burn” audio and video data files to a CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disks. In the past audio and video was copied to VHS videotape cartridges for distribution, but this method is now rarely used. It is important to note that “burning” audio and video files to a CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disk is a slow, time consuming process. An hour of video is often 1 GB of data or more. The elapsed time required to create a data disk depends upon the data transfer rate of the CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray burner hardware installed in a desktop or laptop computer, or a CD-ROM/DVD/Blu-Ray robot machine designed for high volume production of CD-ROM, DVD, Blu-Ray disks. Many CD-ROM recorder drives can only transfer (“burn”) data at the rate of 2× to 4×—300K to 600K per second. For a CD-ROM disk, the total “burn” time for a full disk can be 10 to 20 or more minutes. The DVD “burn” time for a 1 GB video file can be in the range of 7 to 10 minutes. CD-ROM, DVD, and Blu-Ray disks are subject to scratching and other physical damage that can make the disk unreadable. The magnetic or laser substrate on the disks can also deteriorate over time, making the disks unreadable after a number of years.
Police officers and clerks often spend significant time after the end of a shift and at other times manually “burning” a CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disk of evidence to provide to Supervisors, Prosecutors, Defense Attorneys, Courts, and other authorized entities. Many First Responder organizations devote significant clerical effort or even have dedicated staff that do nothing but “burn” CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray evidence disks as their primary job function. First Responders often have dedicated personal computer workstation hardware devoted solely to being available as CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray “burners” for Police Officers, other First Responders, and clerical staff. Alternatively the First Responder organization has to purchase and support an automated CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray burner robot that can automatically feed blank CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disks into a “burner” slot, and “burn” the legal evidence data onto the disk from a queue of burn requests sent by various users. Someone still has to load blank CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disks into the robot. In some cases the personal computer can not be used for any other purpose while the disk is being “burned”. If the burner robot does not automatically burn labels on the disk, someone manually has to label the disk. Someone also has to manually distribute the physical CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disks to the person(s) who requested a copy of the evidence data via interoffice mail, US Mail, Courier, FedEx, UPS, or hand delivery. So the process of “burning” and labeling DME on CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disks to distribute the legal evidence to authorized parties is an expensive, tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone process subject to long delays between request and receipt of DME. The process relies upon fallible human beings to manually distribute legal evidence media, with significant risk that legal evidence will be misplaced, lost, or will come into the possession of an unauthorized user(s), with error-prone or no audit trails of who actually received and had access to the legal DME.
Furthermore, in many cases some or all of the metadata captured along with the audio and video is not “burned” onto the CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disk. Therefore this additional time, date, location and other metadata about the evidence is not available to the recipient of the legal evidence. The recipient only gets the raw audio and video tracks, so some of the evidence collected at an incident scene is not available to the ultimate user—prosecutor, defense attorney, judge, and court system. The user loses the ability to quickly search for relevant DME based upon metadata tags, and loses notes and other descriptive metadata around the audio and video.
Control over access to the evidence data is lost if the disk is misplaced or stolen. Many of the audio and video file storage formats are common standards, without any security or encryption. Furthermore, most personal computers and laptops have CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray drives, have audio and video viewing software that support many of the standard audio and video data storage formats, and can be operated without being connected to any network. Anyone coming into possession of a DME disk could easily use or purchase a computer for a few hundred dollars that would allow them to listen to, view, copy, and further distribute the DME, with no reporting or audit trail of who has viewed or copied the DME contained on the disk. Once a CD-ROM, DVD, or Blu-Ray disk has been “burned”, the evidence is generally available to anyone who has physical possession of the disk.
A more secure and reliable way to distribute legal evidence data is needed.